- This topic has 21 replies, 18 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by nukeproofriding.
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Mac Anti Virus
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CaptainSlowFull Member
What’s the consensus on AV for macs? I’m from a win background so it’s essential. On my other thread Sophos was recommended as its free – the only free one I see in the app store is from Norton.
Should I MTFU? Or since there have been viruses on the mac range, should i use one, if so, are there others to look at?
footflapsFull MemberI installed Sophos on my MBP the other week, after several years of using the Mac without any AV. Did a full scan and came up clean as a whistle…
comedyphilFree MemberI use ClamXav – think it’s in the App store? Free, so worth a checking out. Works ok for me (I think – hasn’t detected any viruses, so either it’s good at its job, or terrible at finding them…)
beckykirk43Free MemberI installed Sophos after having an issue which I thought to be a virus…turned out *someone* had messed up the settings for pop ups…
The Sophos scanner didn’t find anything (as above…several years using the mac without any AV). I’ve have kept Sophos installed should I ever feel the need for it, bit haven’t bothered to get it on the MBP as well as I didn’t really see the point!
JefWachowchowFree MemberAs I understand, we still do not need AV on macs. I haven’t for many years and nor have my fiends who use macs and noone has had any issue. There does seem to be an increase in companies that sell anti virus software insisiting that things have changed and macs do need it now but this has only started up since the apple market share has increased to a point where they feel that they are missing out on a now significant market segment.
PeterPoddyFree MemberAFAIK my iMac is perfectly clean at a year old. There’s a firewall in settings which is turned on but that’s it.
zilog6128Full MemberAs above. Sophos is handy though for detecting Win viruses if you share files with PC users. (No benefit to you, mind).
greggparker9Free MemberI use AVG Free on my MBP, not sure whether it’s needed or not but it’s free so why not!
vorlichFree MemberI’m not saying my mac will always be virus free, but I’d rather not have a bloated piece of CPU hogging, disk mashing vomitware installed if at all possible. I’ll take my chances…
jambalayaFree MemberI always used AVG-free on my Windows machines. In 6 years of using Macs I’ve never run any anti-virus.
IMO Windows is very suspceptable to viruses because its so badly designed and written
CaptainSlowFull MemberI just found this which I thought informative:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4210528?start=0&tstart=0
RioFull MemberI’ve run Macs for 20 years at home and work with no AV and never come across a virus. I won’t be installing AV until there’s a Mac equivalent of MSE (ASE perhaps?) – i.e. something that doesn’t cause more harm than it prevents.
kcalFull Memberavast! do a free OS X anti-virus. I had it on last laptop; hard to judge but it got in the way *a lot* so pausing for thought as to whether to re-install it..
maccruiskeenFull MemberI’ve run Macs for 20 years at home and work with no AV and never come across a virus
I’ve run them for a similar amount of time (since 1989 I think). One worm in system 7 around 1999 that had to be passed around via floppy disks (and did nothing more exciting than keep the harddrive a bit busy). Since then nothing.
CougarFull MemberIMO Windows is very suspceptable to viruses because its so badly designed and written
Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly the reason.
CougarFull MemberI do wonder about this, you know.
Windows viruses are prevalent at least in part due to market penetration. All other things aside, if you want to write a virus which affects as many people as possible, it has to be a Windows virus, just due to numbers. Last time I looked, the ratio of Windows to OSX was about 10 to 1. Windows has been insecure historically, so it’s ripe pickings.
These days, more normal(*) people are buying Macs, and Windows is way more secure than it ever was. By a country mile, the single biggest point of injection for malware these days is out of date third-party applications. If this trend continues, and Flash finally dies, I wonder if we’ll start seeing more malware specifically targeting the (largely complacent) Apple community?
(* – by ‘normal’ I mean people aren’t just buying Macs for specialised tasks any more, they’re being bought as general purpose machines)
xiphonFree MemberWindows security = Allow access to everything, apart from the things you don’t.
Unix security = Deny access to everything, apart from the things you need.
CaptainSlowFull MemberYeah, lets not get this into a win v mac debate folks, each OS has its pros and cons 🙂
Thx for the feedback – I’m not going to rush into buying or installing AV; need to do more reading.
For some reason I thought the app store had everything I needed and I wouldn’t need to dl from external sites – I guess that’s because my only exposure to date has been iPhone/ipad….
Interestingly I’m in the process of downloading office 2011 mac to my PC as downloading to my mbp stalls after 20MB….
M6TTFFree MemberI’ve run Macs for 20 years at home and work with no AV and never come across a virus
I’ve run them for a similar amount of time (since 1989 I think). One worm in system 7 around 1999 that had to be passed around via floppy disks (and did nothing more exciting than keep the harddrive a bit busy). Since then nothing.Yup, remember that fondly – it was also passed on by cd – we sent it to an important client haha
Never used AV, just isn’t the threat
nukeproofridingFree MemberThere have been mac viruses, but nearly all started as trojans not worms. I work on macs everyday and even the creative office I work at who have 100+ computers don’t use av because it’s easier and more effective to just check occasionally using some terminal commands. They use industry standard stuff on routers and servers etc. but individual computers don’t have any.
It isn’t necessary currently as long as you don’t get fooled by something fake. That may change in the future though, as they are currently protected by only accounting for a low worldwide percentage of target computers.
The Flashback malware from earlier this year is a good example of how macs are sometimes targeted, but they’re often weak and underfunded compared to pc attacks because they don’t yield anywhere near enough results for any sort of serious crim to be involved.
defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES
Paste that into terminal which is in applications, if you get directories/volume does not exist – you’re clear, if you get back a result just go on google and there are easy steps to rip Flashback out of your mac using the little black window that is terminal.
Get to know terminal as early as possible, just go careful with it and don’t type SUDO until you’re confident in what you are doing lol
CountZeroFull MemberI’ve run them for a similar amount of time (since 1989 I think). One worm in system 7 around 1999 that had to be passed around via floppy disks (and did nothing more exciting than keep the harddrive a bit busy). Since then nothing.
I remember that vividly! Royal PITA, it was created in Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, before the break-up of the old Soviet Union, and transferred via Photoshop files. We kept getting infected files from agencies, who complained about their Macs being slow, so we’d ‘disinfect’ them, send them back to the agency, telling them what they needed to do, and they’d promptly send them back with artwork amendments freshly re-infected because the incompetent idiots couldn’t grasp that they needed to install anti-viral ‘ware! Went on for months, bloody idiots.
As far as modern Macs are concerned, most exploits seem to be via Adobe’s crappy apps, particularly Flash and Reader, as I understand it, and as Macs require permission to allow things to be installed, provided the operator doesn’t just say yes to any old crap that comes attached to an email then there’s little chance that a Mac will get infected like Wintel machines do.nukeproofridingFree MemberMacs require permission to allow things to be installed
This is a very good point to raise as well.
Even if it’s a personal computer and you are the only one who uses it and are worried about viruses/don’t want to check every few months –
CREATE TWO ACCOUNTS.
One sandbox without admin privileges for daily use,
and another partition with admin privileges so that you can install software etc. but don’t connect to the net on it.
This way 8 times out of 10 you are impervious to any attack on your sandbox account unless it is a very sophisticated, very expensive attack in which case you’re fried anyway so no worries. Back stuff up regularly on an external hard drive using a partition you know is clean as well. Computer basics.
Oh and if something funny starts happening that you can’t control via your computer – rip your router cable out of the wall socket and you’re safe. Something people always forget.
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